Heart Like Mine (13 page)

Victor looked away. “We need to get going,” he said. He smiled at his children and threw his arms out for one more hug. They
complied, wrapping their arms around his neck until he pretended to choke. “Love you, monkeys. I’ll talk with you this week.”

“Love you, Dad!” Max hollered as he turned around and sped inside the house.

“Let me know how that algebra test goes, okay, kitten?” Victor said, and Ava nodded, shoving her face into his neck, inhaling deeply, as though she was trying to memorize his scent. Victor carefully extricated himself from her embrace, and she reluctantly followed her brother’s path inside.

I smiled at Kelli. “It was so nice to finally meet you,” I said, but she only nodded once, briefly, not taking her eyes off Victor. A moment later she whipped around and shut the door.

“Okay,” I said a little shakily as we walked toward his car. “Did that go well or not? I couldn’t tell.”

Victor grimaced and shrugged. “Could’ve been worse,” he said, reaching to take my hand. I opened my mouth, about to ask what he meant, but then closed it again, uncertain if at that point I really wanted to know.

Almost exactly a year later, as I heard the sharp slam of Ava’s door, my gut churned thinking about the pain she and Max were facing. I was a little hurt that Victor asked me to leave the room when he told them about Kelli; I’d assumed we would do it together. It made sense, I supposed, that he wanted to do it alone, but I wished he had said something to me about it in the bedroom so I would have been prepared. So it didn’t look to his children like he was dismissing me. Still, I’d heard every word from the den. They were devastated, and I had no idea how to help them through this. I had no idea how to get through it myself.

“Grace?” Victor called out from the hallway, pulling me from my thoughts. “What happened?” He must have heard Ava’s door. His face appeared from around the corner a few seconds after
his voice. He was pale and disheveled, as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. I didn’t want to tell him what his daughter had said. He had enough to handle; he didn’t need a thirty-seven-year-old whining that she got her feelings hurt.

“Ava just needs some time in her room, I think,” I finally answered him, sighing wearily. I couldn’t believe the exhaustion rolling through my blood. Even my bones felt heavy.

His dark eyebrows furrowed and he frowned. “What did you
say
to her?”

“Nothing!” I snapped, trying to keep the defensiveness I felt out of my voice, but failing miserably. “She wants to be alone. She’s traumatized, Victor. I’m not her mother and I’m certainly not a therapist. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

The skin softened around his eyes and mouth. “Sorry.” The word was a whisper. A ghost of an apology.

I nodded, holding my breath instead of speaking. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean to accuse. He turned around, and a moment later, I heard another door quietly shut.

I blew out an enormous breath between pursed lips and leaned heavily against the back of the couch, pressing both of my palms to my forehead. It was obvious I was the intruder—a totally unwelcome guest. And this was supposed to be my new home. How would we build a life together after this? And then, a much worse thought, one I shoved back down the instant it echoed through my mind.

Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all.

Kelli was almost three months pregnant when she and Victor stood together in a small church and said their vows. Victor’s mother, Eileen, was thrilled when Kelli asked her to be the matron of honor.

“Are you sure your parents can’t come, dear?” Eileen asked as they shopped for a wedding dress. Eileen was a loving and kind woman, and while she was a little concerned that Victor and Kelli were marrying so young, she was as smitten with Kelli as her son had been. Eileen hadn’t married again after Victor’s father left them—she’d worked hard and raised Victor on her own.

“I’m sure,” Kelli said, pulling a dress off the rack and holding it up for Eileen to see. “What about this one?”

“It’s lovely, but maybe a touch too much lace here?” Eileen said, fingering the edge of the bodice. She looked at Kelli with the same warm gray eyes she’d passed on to Victor. “I just hope they don’t regret missing all of this.”

“They won’t,” Kelli said as she hung the dress back up. “We’re not close.” She hadn’t spoken to her parents since leaving California and couldn’t fathom having them in her life. They wouldn’t have recognized her, anyway. She’d built a new version of herself since arriving in Seattle—bubbly and fun. She knew they’d be too much of a reminder of what went wrong, of the mistakes she’d
made and the pain she’d suffered through. It was easier to simply tell people they were estranged.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Eileen said, giving Kelli a quick hug. When she pulled back, Eileen smiled at her. “Well, you have me now, so that’s something.”

Kelli smiled and nodded in return, imagining that Eileen would become the mother figure she’d always wanted. While it made Victor happy to see her spend time with his mom, he too expressed concern that Kelli never talked with her parents.

“They’re your family,” Victor said. “Don’t you miss them?”

“Don’t you miss your father?” Kelli retorted, knowing full well that Victor wanted nothing to do with the man who’d abandoned him. Her point hit home, and Victor let the subject go.

For the first few years, being married to Victor was everything she’d dreamed it would be. He couldn’t wait to become a father. He placed headphones on Kelli’s stomach every night, playing a wide variety of music for Ava—Talking Heads, Bach, and the Beatles. “We don’t know what she likes yet,” Victor told Kelli. “So we need to let her hear a little bit of everything.”

He put his lips on her stomach, too, talking to their baby girl, telling her how much he couldn’t wait to meet her. Kelli relished every kick and turn of Ava inside her body, calling her obstetrician a couple of times a week to make sure everything was okay. “She hasn’t moved for almost eight hours,” Kelli told the doctor once, waking him at three in the morning. “What if something’s wrong with her?”

“She’s sleeping, Kelli,” her doctor said in a tired but patient tone. He was accustomed to the panic of first-time mothers. He knew how to talk them off the ledge. “If she doesn’t move in the next couple of hours, then you can call me back, okay? Everything’s fine. You have a very healthy baby girl on the way.”

Kelli knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t help it. This baby meant the world to her—being a mother, a wife, living the kind of life she’d always dreamed of having. She worked up until her eighth month, when her belly made it impossible to carry the heavy trays at the restaurant. “Is it all right if I stay home with her?” Kelli asked Victor. “Will we be okay?”

Victor smiled at her, reaching out to cup her belly. “It’ll be a little tight, but I think we can make it work. I might have to work a few more shifts, though, to make ends meet.”

She’d nodded, wanting nothing more than to spend hours every day cradling her baby girl, loving her, not letting her out of her sight. When her labor began, the doctor warned her it might be a long one, but Ava arrived after only four hours. Ava screamed atop Kelli’s bare chest, and Kelli cried. Eileen, whom Kelli had asked to be in the room with them for the birth, wept, too, clutching Victor as they gazed upon this small miracle. They were a family.

Not long after Ava was born, Kelli found herself missing her mother; the longing to talk with her became a palpable ache in her chest. After a few weeks, she worked up the courage to call and tell her parents about their granddaughter. “She’s perfect,” Kelli said to her mother, who answered the phone. “Do you want—” Her voice broke on the words, so she had to start again. “Would you like to come see her?” She wondered what it would be like to share Ava with her parents. To see the joy and pride on their faces when they saw the beautiful life she had with Victor.

Her mother was quiet a moment. Kelli could hear her breathing, a lightly raspy sound, as though she was getting over a cold. “I think that might be too hard,” she finally said. “And you know how your father doesn’t like to travel.”

As her mother spoke these words, the door that had
cracked only slightly open inside Kelli slammed shut. It was a mistake to have called, a mistake to believe that anything might have changed. As soon as she hung up the phone, Kelli swallowed her tears, pushed down her hurt, and turned her focus toward Ava. Toward her beautiful, perfect daughter whom Kelli knew she would love no matter what. She adored nursing, seeing her own blue eyes look back at hers, feeling the warmth of her daughter’s body cocooned against her skin. Even though it thrilled Kelli that he wanted to be such an involved father, she was reluctant to let Victor change Ava’s diapers or rock her to sleep. For the first year of Ava’s life, Kelli was never away from her daughter—never left her with a sitter. Not even Eileen, who offered time and again to watch her granddaughter. “You need to get out,” she told Kelli. “Have an afternoon at the spa or lunch with your girlfriends.”

“I can’t stand to leave her,” Kelli said, cupping Ava’s dark head with her hand. “Why don’t you stay for lunch and hold her while I make us something?” She didn’t want her mother-in-law to think she didn’t trust her. It wasn’t that at all. There was something deeper inside Kelli that made it feel impossible to be away from Ava. Something she wasn’t ready to explain.

Then one afternoon, when Ava was only thirteen months old, Victor called Kelli in a panic. “My mom had a stroke,” he said. His words were jagged with tears. “I’m at the hospital.”

“Oh no!” Kelli said. “Is she going to be all right?”

“No,” he sobbed. “She died.”

“Oh, honey,” Kelli said, closing her eyes, suddenly regretting her unwillingness to let Eileen spend time alone with her granddaughter. “I’m so sorry.” Hearing him weep like that unsettled Kelli. She didn’t know how to manage that kind of grief—she was better practiced at pretending it didn’t exist.

As Victor processed the loss of his mother, Kelli went about her days, attempting to work up the courage to chat with other mothers at the park, wanting to make friends, but she felt awkward and shy, worried they wouldn’t like her because she was so young. They all seemed so confident with each other and their children—Kelli was afraid she wouldn’t fit in.

Then one afternoon, a slightly chubby woman with dark messy hair sat down beside Kelli on the bench as Ava played. “I’m Diane,” she said. “And that’s Patrick.” She pointed to a little boy a few years older than Ava, who was climbing on the monkey bars.

Kelli smiled gently and introduced herself. “We just bought a house over on Lilac Street,” Diane explained. “I thought I’d bring Patrick to the park and check it out.”

“Lilac Street?” Kelli said. “That’s where we live. You bought the house next door to us!” They’d only been in their house a few months; Eileen had left it to her and Victor in her will. A true gift, since there were only five years left on the mortgage.

“Well, what do you know?” Diane said. “I guess this friendship was meant to be.”

Kelli smiled. Diane was plain—she didn’t wear makeup and her gray sweatshirt had some kind of red stain on the arm—and Kelli liked her immediately. She reminded her a bit of Nancy, her best friend in ninth grade. She wondered briefly what had happened to Nancy but resigned herself to the idea that she’d likely never know. Nancy was another thing she had lost.

Now, though, having a friend next door helped the days go by much more quickly. Over the next few years, she and Diane spent almost every morning together, letting the children play, talking about their husbands, and gossiping about the other women they still saw at the park. Victor worked long hours at the restaurant, but Kelli did everything she could to give him a wonderful life.
She cooked and cleaned and made sure his favorite beer was always in the fridge. She took long walks with Ava, staying in good enough shape to wear the lacy lingerie he loved. He adored her body; he touched her gently and was as focused on her pleasure as he was on his. They still wrapped around each other every night, murmuring about their dreams. “I think I might have an investor to open a restaurant next year,” Victor told her one night when Ava was five.

“Really?” Kelli said, verging on the edge of sleep. “Who?”

Victor proceeded to tell her about a regular customer he’d gotten to know—an executive at Amazon who was looking to back a local business. “We went and looked at a space downtown today,” Victor told her. “It’s perfect. I can’t wait to show it to you.”

Kelli loved the space, too, and before she knew it, Victor had signed the paperwork and together, they began figuring out the design. It was just like they’d talked about that first night when he drove her home. They weren’t just building a restaurant together—they were building a future. They were building the rest of their lives. Once Ava was in first grade the following year, Kelli imagined she’d work during the day at the Loft, helping Victor with their dream. She’d wait tables or serve as hostess. Whatever Victor wanted, she’d do. But just as Victor processed all the permits to begin renovation on the space, Kelli began feeling sick in the mornings, just as she had when she was nineteen. “Are you pregnant?” Victor asked her as Kelli stumbled out of the bathroom the morning they were supposed to meet with the general contractor.

“I think so,” Kelli said, nodding. “I’m a few weeks late.” She hadn’t thought much of missing her period at first. She’d always been a little irregular, especially when her weight was down.

A flicker of panic sparked in Victor’s gray eyes, but it disappeared just as suddenly. “Maybe it will be a boy,” he said in a soft voice.

“I hope so,” Kelli said just as Ava dashed into their bedroom from the hallway and jumped on the bed with Victor.

“Daddy!” she squealed, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Oomph!” Victor said as she hugged him. “Where’s the fire, little girl?”

She pulled back and gave him a serious look. “There’s no fire,” she said. “But if there was, I call a fireman and then
stop! drop! and roll!
like my teacher taught me at school.”